The Seam That Went Sideways

Sella stepped into the black seam before she could change her mind.

The grass vanished beneath her boot. Not parted, not flattened—the hillside simply stopped agreeing that it was there. For one breath she stood with one foot in daylight and one foot in a darkness so complete it seemed to have weight.

Then the rope at her wrist jerked, and Tassa came through after her.

Iven followed with a strangled curse. Brannoc entered last, carrying the two halves of his shield. Behind him, the false hillside remained visible through the narrow opening: the younger Brannoc watching them, the duplicate shield dragging itself toward the staircase in the sky, and five sets of footsteps beginning to move again.

“Close it,” Brannoc said.

“I don’t know how,” Sella answered.

“Try something confident.”

“That has never worked for us.”

The seam sealed behind him.

Darkness became a corridor.

It was narrow enough that Brannoc’s shoulders nearly brushed both walls, but the walls were not stone. They had the texture of packed earth, except that roots protruded from them in straight horizontal lines. Small white flowers grew from the roots. Their petals opened and shut in time with footsteps somewhere far away.

Sella held up her hand. The gesture made no sense in the dark, but the party stopped anyway.

The footsteps were still audible.

Not behind them. Not ahead. They came from the walls, moving in a slow descending rhythm. Four sets landed together. The fifth followed half a pace late.

Tassa leaned close to Sella. “They came through?”

“I don’t know.”

“Excellent. We’ve entered the portion of the expedition where your answers become useful decorations.”

Sella felt along the nearest wall. The earth was cold and damp. Beneath her palm, a root shivered.

Iven whispered, “We should not speak too loudly.”

Brannoc looked back into the sealed dark. “Why?”

“Because the room may be listening.”

“It has been listening since the first floor.”

“Yes, but now it has a narrow corridor in which to concentrate.”

A flower beside Iven’s elbow snapped open. Inside its white petals was a tiny black mouth.

It said, “Concentrate.”

Iven flinched away. Tassa covered the flower with her hand, but the word continued to vibrate against her palm.

Sella drew her knife and cut the stem.

The flower fell. Its roots withdrew into the wall. For a moment, the corridor smelled of fresh rain.

“Useful decoration,” Tassa murmured.

They moved on.

The corridor sloped sharply, but Sella’s body could not agree on which way. Her stomach insisted they were descending. Her knees insisted they were climbing. The dust along the floor slid toward her boots, then reversed and drifted toward the ceiling.

At the end of the passage, a pale light appeared.

The duplicate shield stood there.

It had climbed a stair of black glass that rose from the floor and disappeared into the wall. The two halves were no longer dragging separately. They had joined along a clean, unscarred edge, making a whole shield with the wrong-sided rivets and the old white basilisk scar.

A hand held it.

The younger Brannoc stood on the glass stairs, though there had been no room for him to follow them through the seam. His face was turned away. He wore no armor, only a faded brown shirt and a strip of leather around his left wrist.

Brannoc stopped so suddenly that Tassa walked into his back.

The younger man raised the shield.

The corridor changed.

Sella’s boots struck stone. The earthen walls withdrew. For an instant she saw a familiar landing beneath her feet—the Floor 101 landing, with its four footprints waiting in the dust. Then she saw the same landing above her, below her, and on both sides, each one rotated differently.

The black-glass staircase remained in every direction.

The younger Brannoc looked over his shoulder.

“Which way did you come from?” he asked.

Brannoc’s jaw tightened. “The hill.”

The younger man frowned. “There is no hill here.”

“There shouldn’t be a you here either.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No,” said Brannoc. “It’s a complaint.”

For the first time, the younger Brannoc smiled. It was a smile Sella recognized: Brannoc’s old, reluctant amusement, from before the years of dungeon dust and injuries had settled into the corners of his face.

The sight unsettled her more than the false father had.

“What is that shield?” Sella asked.

The younger Brannoc looked down at it. “The one I carried when we went below.”

“You never went below,” Brannoc said.

The younger man’s expression emptied. “Not yet.”

The black ring around Iven’s throat tightened.

Sella seized his sleeve. “Careful.”

“I know.” He pressed both fingers to the ring. “The statement has a place.”

The younger Brannoc descended one step. The glass rang beneath his bare foot.

“Who are you?” Tassa asked.

Brannoc glanced at her. “That is a dangerous question.”

“Most of mine are.”

The younger man considered her. “I am Brannoc Pell.”

The ring did not react.

Brannoc shifted his broken shield halves. “So am I.”

The corridor shuddered.

The stairs multiplied. The younger Brannoc stood on three landings at once, each holding the same shield. His voice came from all of them.

“One of you has carried it longer.”

Sella watched the shield rather than the man. The duplicate’s handle was on the wrong side. Its repair rivets faced inward. But the white basilisk scar was not a scar at all. It was a line of painted teeth.

The room had copied the shield from memory, but not from Brannoc’s memory. From something that had watched him.

“What happened to the shield you carried when you went below?” she asked.

The younger Brannoc’s gaze moved to the two broken halves.

“It broke.”

“When?”

“After we won.”

Brannoc went very still.

Sella felt the rope tighten between them. “That’s impossible.”

Iven made a warning sound.

The ring began to constrict.

Sella corrected herself at once. “It has not happened to us yet.”

The pressure eased, but not completely. The false sentence still had purchase somewhere in the room.

Younger Brannoc looked up. “You have not won.”

A bell rang in the darkness.

This time it rang five times.

The footsteps had reached the seam.

Behind the walls, something heavy pressed against the corridor. Roots bent. White flowers snapped shut. A long shape passed through the earth without breaking it, and the party felt its movement in their teeth.

Tassa drew both knives. “The visitors have arrived.”

“Don’t say that,” Iven said.

“Fine. The visitors are here but not arriving.”

The pressure around his throat loosened.

Brannoc stared at the younger version of himself. “Move.”

The younger Brannoc held the shield across the staircase. “You cannot pass while carrying what is broken.”

“That shield is not mine.”

“No,” said the younger man. “But yours is.”

The black glass beneath him cracked.

Sella understood before anyone else did. The corridor was not asking Brannoc to surrender the duplicate. It was asking him to choose which shield counted as his—and to speak the choice aloud.

Brannoc looked down at the two halves in his arms. They were heavy, familiar, and ruined. The shield on the stair was whole, false, and waiting.

Behind the walls, five presences moved closer.

Sella wanted to tell him what to say. She wanted to make the choice for him before the room could turn it into a trap. But Brannoc had carried that shield through every floor. If anyone could name what it meant, it was him.

He lifted both broken halves.

“This is mine,” he said.

The false shield split down its center.

The younger Brannoc staggered. The black-glass stairs folded inward, becoming a single narrow bridge. The duplicate pieces fell through the cracks and vanished into the dark beneath.

The corridor exhaled.

For one instant, Sella saw a doorway at the far end. Beyond it lay a room filled with pale hanging lanterns. Five figures stood before the door, but only four cast shadows.

Then the view snapped shut.

The younger Brannoc was gone. In his place, a single footprint marked the glass bridge: bare, narrow, and pointed deeper.

Brannoc stared at it. His grip on the broken shield halves had changed. He no longer held them as evidence of loss, but as something he had chosen to keep.

Tassa sheathed one knife. “That went better than expected.”

“Your expectations are diseased,” Brannoc said.

The footsteps stopped behind the walls.

Sella stepped onto the bridge. “We keep moving.”

Iven caught her arm. His face had gone bloodless.

The ring spoke through him, but the voice was no longer patient. It sounded frightened.

“Do not let the fifth one learn your names.”

Sella looked back at the sealed corridor.

From somewhere beyond it, a voice called her name in her own voice.

Then four others answered.